St Mary’s NHS Trust has become the second trust in London to go live with a new pharmacy management system from JAC Computer Services Ltd, supplied by BT Capital Care Alliance.
The new pharmacy system has been supplied to the trust as an additional service by BT CCA, the local service provider for the NHS National Programme for IT in London.
The JAC system will help provide greater control over drug costs and real-time medicines information at the time of dispensing and provide a basis for the future introduction of full e-prescribing at the trust.
Anne Tyrell, chief pharmacist at St Mary’s, said: "In the average hospital 7,000 prescribed doses are given to patients every day. JAC makes it much easier for us to manage those complex demands and, combined with other developments, will free up pharmacy staff to support colleagues and patients on the wards."
Phil Jones, director of ICT at St Mary’s, said that one of the main reasons the JAC system had been selected was due to the interfaces it provides to automatic dispensing robots currently being installed at the trust.
"Our existing system was old, had limited functionality, particularly on financial reporting and was reaching the end of its life," explained Jones. "We had been informed that the system was not going to be maintained by the supplier and that gave us the opportunity to evaluate our long-term objectives and select a solution that would meet our current and future requirements."
The introduction of automatic robotic dispensing linked to pharmacy management systems was one of the recommendations of the 2001 Audit Commission report, ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’ on medicines management in NHS hospitals.
Robert Tysall-Blay, chief executive of JAC said: "This is the second system to go live in London in three months as part of our work with BT and the NHS Connecting for Health strategy which further reinforces our position as the UK market leader in pharmacy management systems."
Marek Stepniak, director of business development at BT’s health division, said: "Our close relationship with JAC means that we have been able to meet the pharmacy stock control requirements of St Mary’s NHS Trust on time and to budget and we anticipate further roll-outs of JAC’s Pharmacy management system over the coming months."
JAC is a division of US-based Mediware Information Systems Inc., a provider of software solutions and services for medication management, blood and cellular products and perioperative departments. The company has 1,100 worldwide installations. The first London trust to go live with the system was the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust.
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